Post navigation

Batman is Gifted at Crimefighting, Not so Great at Names

So Batman
fuck yeah
today we are talking about Batman
but wait
slow your roll
because at the beginning of this story
this dude we are talking about
he ain’t even CALLED batman yet
because what the fuck kind of thing would that be to name your kid?
well okay, that’s not a fair question
it’s a totally rad thing to name a kid
(boy, girl, hermaphrodite, minotaur)
batman is always appropriate as a name for anything that you want to totally rock
but that is only because THIS DUDE
(whose name is BRUCE WAYNE)
WENT OUT OF HIS WAY
TO MAKE BATMAN A SAFE AND SWEET NAME FOR EVERY MAN WOMAN AND CHILD ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH.
He did this by having his parents murdered in front of him.

What’s that you say?
“Having your parents murdered in front of you is totally lame and not sweet at all?”
THAT IS A VERY INSENSITIVE THING TO SAY AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED
but I am glad you said that because I was about to say the same thing
but as a rhetorical device though, not a legitimate statement
which I was then going to answer like so:
ahem

IT IS TOTALLY SWEET AND NOT LAME BECAUSE HIS PARENTS GET MURDERED AFTER AN OPERA
WHERE THEY WENT BECAUSE THEY ARE SUPER WEALTHY AND OWN COMPANIES AND SHIT.
Wait, wait
still lame.
Uh…
oh yeah
and they were killed for like NO REASON.
Nope, still lame.
…
They were killed by a dude named Joe Chill?
AWRIIIIIIGHT!

So Joe Chill stabs this dude’s parents
which is a particularly un-chill thing to do
but then again,
what kind of name is Joe Chill?
That’s almost as bad as Batman.
A name like that is practically BEGGING you to stab some dude’s parents.
like “Why do they call you Joe Chill, huh?”
“CAUSE I STAB DUDES’ PARENTS.”
Right.

Look, let’s move on.
even though Bruce Wayne sure as shit ain’t moving on.
He is so stuck on this shit
that he decides to devote his whole life to fighting crime
so he can prevent random murders of opera-going rich-folk like his hardworking billionaire parents.
To that end, he uses a bunch of company funds to go on vacation for a while
and also get super buff
and then he comes back home
back to his wisecracking butler, Alfred
because yeah
dude has a butler
also a giant superhero cave under his house
and a mansion and yachts and DASHING GOOD LOOKS.
Dude has the hookups, is what I’m saying.

Here is what he does with those hookups:
HE USES THEM FOR GOOD
because I am assuming he got all the coke and whores out of his system during his long absence
or maybe he got them into his system
that is probably more like what happened.
How do you get hookers into your system?
don’t think too hard about that one.
ANYWAY
He starts fighting crime
and at first the police are like HELL NAWWW
but then later, they’re like AWWW YEAH
and they make a big spotlight that has a bat on it
because OH YEAH I FORGOT
Bruce Wayne totally has a theme going on
and the theme is bats
because one night he’s like “Man,
I’m super ripped and I have all these high-tech gadgets and a superhero cave
but you know what I don’t have?
A really dumb costume”
and then SCREE-BAM
here comes a bat flying in through his window
like bats tend to do
and Bruce is like “GODDAMN BAT BROKE MY WINDOW
ARE YOU GONNA PAY FOR THAT WINDOW, BAT?”
and the bat is like “I’M A BAT, MOTHERFUCKER.
BATS DON’T PAY FOR SHIT.”
And Bruce Wayne is like “holy shit, that’s perfect
I will aspire to have all the cunning and ingenuity of a man
coupled with all the don’t-give-a-fuck of a bat.
I will call myself … bat … man
because it’s like 3AM and I still gotta clean up all this glass
and I’m pretty drunk and I don’t like thinking”
and then he gets a sweet costume and an army of bats and a bird-themed twink to haul around
and suddenly it’s okay to name your babies Batman.

So the moral of the story
is that you shouldn’t worry about bettering your community
that’s for crazy billionaires in animal suits to take care of.

Dude, you forgot about the part where he let a guy fall to his death in his premier issue and the decade where everything was all goofy and involved aliens and him turning into Bat-Baby and then the Justice League and the Satellite Era and then how he had his memory erased by his friends because they’re a bunch of dicks and then the part where he funded a big world surveillance network which then got taken over by some other asshole who wanted to get rid of metahumans or some shit and then how he started a whole network of Batmen all over the world and then how he got killed except he wasn’t really dead he was just time travelling and then the universe got rebooted and then how he started fighting an evil clan of owls.

… actually, maybe that’s a bit much to fit into one post. I can see why you didn’t include that.

Yeah man I just read up on batman and that shit straight blew my mind. Another time, maybe. Also: I tend to think of those as less mythical than his origin story because the origin has been told and retold by like a dozen artists, whereas the super-surveillance shit and the time-traveling doomsday device shit and lex luthor being president and then there’s zombies and spaceships and shit was just kinda spun out to keep an old character fresh. Which I guess prolly happened with myths, too. But it just doesn’t feel right, man.

Best superhero explanation I ever heard: Batman is a five year old’s power fantasy – he doesn’t have any parents, he gets to stay up all night and play with cool toys, and nobody ever tells him what to do.

Well , This is all good , except for the fact that you missed the Robins . Dick (It’s short for Richard , bonehead) Grayson was the first robin , who ran around Gotham at the age of 8 , without pants and performed flips and shit. Jason Todd was so fucking badass , he stole the tires of the goddamn batmobile , was later beat to death with a crowbar , and later came back to life to have daddy issues and wear a red hood. Tim Drake was a creepy stalking nerd. And Damian is Bruce’s real son created from non!con sex (yes it does sound like bad glee fan-fiction . ) So yay ! you now know about Bruce’s tendencies to kidnap young children and you talk to people about how much Ben Affleck sucks at comic con.